Extracurricular activities can be the thing that a student looks forward to doing that day, counting down the hours and minutes until school ends. They are a great place to interact with others and develop an interest or skill, where lasting friendships can be made outside of a student's normal social circles. The students have a greater control over how things are run, providing kids the chance to step into leadership roles. However, they are not for everyone. Students should not be required to participate in at least one extracurricular activity because the school could not cover the wide range of interests students have, would waste time that students need, and would ruin the experiences of other people participating in the activity.

Students have a wide variety of interests and hobbies, some that cannot be pursued through an elective or a school-sponsored extracurricular. The point of extracurricular activities, after all, is to develop skills farther than what students learn in school. While some people with interests like football and journalism can join school-sponsored extracurricular activities like the football team or the school newspaper, other students enjoy more niche or specific subjects. Incorporating these subjects into school extracurricular clubs would be difficult due to high equipment costs, lack of space, lack of widespread interest, or several other reasons. For example, some students consider fencing to be their favorite activity. However, the equipment required to do fencing is expensive and prone to breaking. This may not be extremely hard for one person to afford, but starting a school fencing club would require the school to buy several sets. Furthermore, fencing also requires a 14 meter strip as well as extra room so other students will not get hit by any stray blades. The school's resources are limited, and could not sponsor an activity like this without the kind of support that only mainstream sports have. In the meantime, it is not fair to the students who fence to force them into another activity when they could be practicing fencing outside of school.

Extracurricular activities take up time that would be better spent elsewhere. School already takes up a large chunk of the day, but by requiring students to do extracurricular activities, kids are forced to stay for one or two more hours doing activities that do not seem worth spending time on. If a student chooses to join an extracurricular because they wanted to and not because it was required, the activity wouldn't seem like a waste of time. For the other students, however, those few hours could be spent on homework, catching up on sleep, connecting with friends and family, or pursuing their interests outside of school. Many students are on sports travel teams, and they need the time to practice with their team. Some people take classes outside of school or just prefer to do activities they like at home. Although these students are not joining school clubs, they are still doing extracurricular activities and should be able to continue doing so without worrying about running out of time for homework or missing out on sleep.

Forcing people to participate in an extracurricular activity would ruin the experiences of other students. Making extracurricular activities a requirement would cause people to join clubs without genuine interest in the activity. These students will show less enthusiasm and put in less effort towards club activities and can drag things down for other students. They could be unwilling to do work or serve as a distraction to other students. There is a similar situation in elective courses, where some students only select a course because they believe it will be an easy class. Those students tend to participate less or be loud and off-topic. During group projects, they don't contribute as much. For many other students, it is frustrating to deal with these people, especially since there is no common interest in the activity they are doing.

Requiring participation in extracurricular activities ultimately does more harm than good to students because it disregards that broad range of activities students enjoy and takes valuable time from students who should be free to choose how to spend it. It also detracts from the value of extracurricular activities- which are created by people cooperating and acting on a common interest -by adding people who don't enjoy the activity. Inspiring students to be curious and passionate should be the school's priority, but by requiring students to do an extracurricular club the schools are only boxing students into a mold that ignores the complexity and individuality of each person. Students are required to get an education that will help them survive as adults, but they should be able to decide which hobbies and skills they want to specialize in. In the end, the unique path they decide to carve out for themselves should be of their own making.